


Little Knight

by LulligesLulu



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: A friendship that spans a lifetime and beyond, Breath of the Wild Spoilers, Except there's no real comfort, Ganon is somewhat redeemed, Hurt/Comfort, Resurrection fanfic but with a twist, The events of Breath of the Wild in the eyes of the princess, repeated character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28044054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LulligesLulu/pseuds/LulligesLulu
Summary: In that moment the Calamity stilled and extended a hand towards him.In that moment twisted robotic arms cupped around his frame and cradled him to their chest. I watched my nemesis do something I had yearned to do for so long yet in that moment it was too late.Because it wasn’t me to hold out my hand to him when he cried.It wasn’t me to brush his tears.It wasn’t me to whisper and poison his mind, neither was it me who twisted a blade through his gut the very moment he took a hesitant step forwards.It wasn’t me to hold him as he died this time, slowly, so slowly, whispering him through the pain the whole time until there was forgiveness in his eyes as he passed.In my rage, my powers went rancid.The world flashed a burning hot blue and when I opened my eyes anew there was that boy again, blinking in a tub, flinching but then easing at the tone of my voice as he rose from his death bed to explore the room.
Relationships: Link & Calamity Ganon (Legend of Zelda), Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	Little Knight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KZelda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KZelda/gifts).



> Hi KayZ, I love you a tremendous lot and I meant to send this to you ages ago and actually did twice but chickened out and then deleted it :')
> 
> I know you are more of a Twi stan but I dunno I thought you might enjoy it anyway? This story is quite sad though I put a lot of love and effort into it so I hope you'll like it <3
> 
> Everyone reading this, I hope you enjoy!

Legend has it that, shall the Kingdom of Hyrule ever be in peril, a boy shall rise above all others, a boy with a pure soul and a lion's heart to claim the sword that seals the darkness, to restore balance to the realms of light and dark.

Legend has it that the queen shall birth a girl of utmost power, of purity and gentile yet cleverness and a steady hand in all danger. She shall force away all sorrow so that peace may once again reign over these plains.

Legend has it that a dark force beyond thine vastest nightmares thrives beneath the grounds of Hyrule ever-waiting to be reborn into the world. A Gerudo youngling of strength and honour shall shred his vows on the day the moon bleeds and malice shall once more reign upon this world.

Life is a frail thing, brittle, more so than one may ever know.

It’s a fascinating thing, really, a boy in leathery boots, a radiant grin and blonde hair pulled into an innocent ponytail despite the sword held in a young hand.

A shadow of a boy always trailing behind wherever I went, always listening, absorbing, giving smiles when needed and nodding encouragement when none was asked for.

For the longest time Link was beyond my understanding, his silence angered me, his incessant presence confused me and his quiet support felt almost spiteful despite the honesty I could read on his face.

Many a Moon would pass where I would feel naught but contempt for his loyal eyes, his puny built, I would wonder in disgust why one as small and young had the strength to carry his destiny with such nonchalance while my powers still evaded me.

Yet as I learned to read his motives, shrouded deep behind that facade of the perfect knight so did he come to see the struggling girl by his side and our silence began to feel more like a...wordless trust than a matter of mere misunderstanding.

As Link would learn to smile and hum I, too, found the smile I thought was lost to the cold hours within the Spring of Wisdom and more often than not I would find myself walking alongside him, no longer followed but...accompanied.

The day the Calamity rose all that was lost to the flames.

His body a battlefield of scratches and burns, of cuts, gashes, breaks, tears, slashes, before I knew it I had run to save him, feeling for the very first time the divine powers flood throughout me.

On the first ever notion to protect, not conquer, I had awoken my light.

How funny a thing to have walked in front, then alongside and then cowered behind one so frail only to save their life yet lose them all the same.

In a last desperate effort to save his life strength broke forth from a place within I had never yet known yet could navigate with a certainty I had henceforth been unaware of.

A shattered face smiling knowingly as he fell to his knees and rose no more...

I cried in vain to wake him.

He did not survive.

What we lay to rest in the Shrine was a broken and bleeding corpse.

That boy, Link, had left with the fires of chaos, a faded smile amidst a world of horror now doused in false silence.

I did not hear their screaming.

I did not see their desperate fight to survive.

I saw silence and a body.

Stagnant.

For a century to come.

The Shrine was a terrible device once used to revive the bodies of soldiers when they would fall in the fight against the Calamity, programmed to sate our armies in numbers, not desecrate those that had fought so bravely yet...was it not the same?

To force a broken body to rise, to hand swords to shattered fingers only to fall and fall and fall again.

Death shall not be cheated.

But the Hero was needed.

With the initial attack gone past what our lands lacked was the spirit of the Hero of Courage and Link was the only one who could bring it back to them, he was needed not for his body but his heart, his face – thus we waited.

And waited.

For muscles to restitch and skin to close.

It took a hundred years and the end result was a faulty soul.

What emerged from the Shrine a hundred years in the future was not Link but a stranger.

A little boy stuck in a ginormous legacy – he was but a child, just learning to appreciate the world anew when in the span of only a few days it was dumped upon his shoulders.

When he first awoke I feared that he was but a blank slate, like oh so many of the brave soldiers I had seen rise anew but it was different.

He looked younger somehow.

And that was the first time I realised what a horrible thing I had done by bringing him back into the world.

I had fulfilled a wish my Link had harboured ever since the very first day we met. A normal life, one free of worry and destinies and a petty princess to serve – Link was free.

He was free to not be “Link” now.

He was a new person.

Someone who got to wake up in the morning and take a look around the fields, to the sound of birds and the smell of wild flowers. Not the petulant orders of a commander, forcing him to drill, drill, nothing but drill.

I began to understand that he didn’t look younger.

He had just regained the kindred glee that had been robbed of him when he was under my command. He looked happy.

He looked like the boy he was, not the boyish knight that had been taught to wear a mask and never once vocalize his thoughts.

His eyes were beaming with emotion and a foolish part of me believed that I could finally protect that innocence if I forced him to act fast and get it over with. In truth, the one hundred years I spent in solitude were but a moment to me.

I was unaware of the world moving around us. I felt like I was lying next to him in that tank, just a still body in the arms of another.

I could feel it, the moment his heart began to beat anew.

It was as though that gentle beat finally pulled me out of my trance and I panicked, for once seeing the way the world had changed, realizing just how much time had passed.

A hundred years. A century.

And both the princess and the Hero were believed to have died all that time.

In my panic my powers wavered and I heard the Hero cry, cry with the rawness of a million lifetimes spent in a casket beneath the earth, waiting to be revived again, he was screaming, thrashing in his hold.

It was a long time before I understood he was not yet awake. He was screaming because he was in pain.

I sent out my blessings and in my efforts to soothe him...I rose him instead.

I was so lost in my sorrow, I never realized he had opened his eyes and blinked at my voice filling his mind – he was young, so young when he died, too young when he rose again.

I told myself not to let it fool me.

He was a man, not a youngling.

He was my soldier, not a child.

This man was a century old even if he looked no older than sixteen.

Link stood before me after the many days he had fought to fulfil his quest and yet again I realized I had made a grave mistake.

In my efforts to ease his suffering I urged him to hurry...but thus it all came back too fast.

He was awake for naught but a few days when his memories began to be forced back upon him and I had to watch that childish curiosity die to a stoic broken mask all over again...

I couldn’t handle it, I urged him to hurry on the ruse that I couldn’t hold it anymore but that made it worse!

He fought bravely night and day, he ditched his meals and ignored his wounds until he was barely half-alive when he reached the castle.

He was trembling from just the effort it took to climb the stairs, his nose was leaking blood onto the floor. I had broken him once again, inside and out.

He died in his battle against the Calamity, torn in two before he had even crossed the doorstep.

He looked so small when he died this time, because this time I had seen him come undone, I had seen that he truly was but a boy, not a soldier, and in death it was a horrible twist of irony how small his frame was.

He lay there on the ground for a long time before Mipha rose to revive him. She was pale as she spoke.

“It was my pleasure.”

He took a stuttering breath and began to cry.

In that moment the Calamity stilled and extended a hand towards him.

In that moment twisted robotic arms cupped around his frame and cradled him to their chest.

I watched my nemesis do something I had yearned to do for so long yet in that moment it was too late.

Because it wasn’t me to hold out my hand to him when he cried.

It wasn’t me to brush his tears.

It wasn’t me to whisper and poison his mind, neither was it me who twisted a blade through his gut the very moment he took a hesitant step forwards.

It wasn’t me to hold him as he died this time, slowly, so slowly, whispering him through the pain the whole time until there was forgiveness in his eyes as he passed.

In my rage, my powers went rancid.

The world flashed a burning hot blue and when I opened my eyes anew there was that boy again, blinking in a tub, flinching but then easing at the tone of my voice as he rose from his death bed to explore the room.

I was livid, thinking of his failure, thinking of his bordering betrayal and I urged him to go faster, faster.

Until this time he didn’t awake when he fell to the monster.

This time, I realized he had none of his memories.

Just a disembodied voice, commanding him straight to the castle with naught but a torn shirt and a stick.

No Sidon, no memories.

No me.

He had not spoken to my father, he had reached the castle in two days and died immediately after.

The Calamity cackled and spat at me, at how I had wrecked my toy and shattered his little frame before he had even understood whose voice it was he so loyally followed.

Little Knight, in the moonlight, your eyes glowed.

Little Knight, when you whimpered, I could not hear you.

Little Knight, I wish I could have held you when the night was too dark.

But you died before I could tell you I was sorry...

I wallowed in my grief for two days, astral hands cradling his shattered body.

He had looked confused this time he fell, didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know this feeling, this sense of betrayal when I urged him to hold on.

He looked up to the heavens and frowned.

Then he angled himself away from me and died with a groan and an eye roll.

The third time he awoke he was shivering.

I spoke to him in a soft voice, trying to explain, I was beginning to grow exhausted, redundant of my power encapsulating us, tired of retelling it all all over again.

He eyed the cave walls and then frowned.

With a grunt he rose to his feet and went ahead.

I left him to his own devices this time.

I tried to see past my anger and amuse myself at his excitement instead - he was a reckless child, fell off trees and used all his new items in the strangest ways possible.

Of course with no one there to teach him, he didn’t know not to strike down trees with a spear or use his shield as a board.

Link was back then in a way as he sat by the fire and hummed that tiny tune I remembered him whistling in the past when he finished up his duties and retreated to his chambers – a rare occasion of quirkiness and pep in his step before he fell back into the role of the perfect soldier.

I began to understand that I missed him.

More than I could have thought.

When I watched him travel swiftly from place to place, watched him laugh along with strangers and then spar bravely whenever an innocent traveller turned out to be a cultist.

For a while there I saw that man...the boy that had stood before me that night when we were ambushed by the Yiga.

I began to rediscover the part of me that loved him and with it I grew to understand how shameful my actions were.

When he followed me loyally with no recollection, when he died for me with no means of knowing who I was, I had resented him for his weakness.

I had yearned back to the loyal soldier by my side, not knowing or maybe just too ignorant to see he had never left.

Link died at the castle.

He battled the Calamity for two nights and two days but before he could ever deal the finishing blow, he was eroded and ripped away by malice.

My power was not strong enough to rouse him.

His heart was stopped before I ever got to call out to him, his eyes were closed before I had the chance to catch him.

He fell to the ground like a leaf in he wind, soundless, and rose no more.

It went on like that.

Day in and day out I became a little weaker.

Day in and day out I watched him die all over again.

I watched him kill and be killed and I watched as he took his first stuttering breath back in the Shrine.

With every run, his movements were a little weaker.

And with every try failed my heart grew a little heavier.

I did not understand until many days past that he was beginning to be aware of me.

His face would sometimes turn towards me or he would sign a silent conversation with himself that I would laugh at, never knowing it was me he was talking to.

He died again. Drowned.

We sat by a fire and had a nice conversation.

He died again. Burned.

I told him how much I had loved him.

He died again. Crushed.

He looked at me in silence and asked-

He died again. Frozen.

‘You don’t anymore?’

The next time he awoke he didn’t recall my answer.

His strength was fading now and I couldn’t say why.

He sometimes lay in the Shrine for hours and whimpered through a fever seeking his life just upon waking.

I could hear his heartbeat withering when he only just breathed.

A part of me had known.

That it was temporary.

That the Shrine only gave life once but was built to take it again later.

It was a week when he couldn’t get up again.

I saw him lie in that casket of stone, blood rolling down his chin as he fought so hard to just breathe, every breath bubbling, rattling in his chest.

His fever was high.

He wouldn’t make it.

I didn’t know if he would wake again.

He did.

From then on Link was but a flickering light, like a dying candle that was fighting hard to burn but in the cold evening wind I could ignite it again and again and it died all the same.

His few periods of consciousness grew shorter. Farther in between.

Sometimes he would wake, feebly asking for my name. He never lasted long enough to hear it.

Sometimes he would wake, laughing when I held him and asked me to kill him.

Sometimes he would wake, asking me where I was, who I was. If all of this was normal.

Sometimes he was silent.

Most times he never woke at all.

I sat by his bed, feeling his heartbeat start, then die again.

A blue flash.

A trembling beat.

A smile.

Death.

A blue flash.

A feeble breath.

A cough.

Death.

A blue flash.

A whimper.

Fever.

Death.

A blue flash.

A tear.

Blood.

Death.

A blue flash.

A whimper.

A blue flash.

Blood.

A blue flash. Blue flash. Blue flash.

Pulse.

Then finally-

Nothing.

It was the third day of torture when his suffering was eased.

I was by his side when his heart refused to start again. I was cradling his head when his eyes refused to open.

I was holding his hand when his breathing never came.

“Link...”

Please.

“Open your eyes...”

Please...

“Open your eyes...”

He was so small when I held him, feeling his hair on my cheek.

“Open your eyes... Wake up, Link...”

He was cold, skin slick under my fingers.

His eyes were closed calmly. I vaguely recalled a grin on his lips when our eyes last met several hours ago when he still had the strength to keep them open.

Watching his life fade so many times had left me so empty, so scared, so weak I was barely aware of my actions.

I did not know that that strange heavy feeling I felt was sorrow.

All I could do was whimper and cradle his head.

Still in his Shrine Link did not breathe.

With his fall the Calamity rose.

With the Hero’s Spirit gone Ganondorf awakened, spreading through all of Hyrule in search of the being that had taken its toy until it never rose to spite him.

In my grief I was encompassed by the willowing malice of my hunter.

Astral hands were gently pulled from his limbs.

Burning tears were gently wiped by nails as sharp as iron.

A hoarse voice of hatred sang sweet nothings in my ear as we sat and held the Hero close that had fallen so many times and was so brave until the very end.

With Link in our arms we sat in his Shrine and grieved, in that one moment putting our differences aside to acknowledge that we could not be whole again, that the illusion of balance had corrupted us all.

Link was the balance that doused our world in peace.

Link was the chess piece.

That day I was aware there was no way we could ever be whole again.

Legend has it that, shall the Kingdom of Hyrule ever be in peril, a boy shall rise above all others, a boy with a pure soul and a lion's heart. But the young boy’s heart ceased beating.

Legend has it that the queen shall birth a girl of utmost power, of purity and gentile yet cleverness and a steady hand in all danger. But the princess sobbed like a fool.

Legend has it that a dark force beyond thine vastest nightmares thrives beneath the grounds of Hyrule ever-waiting to be reborn into the world. But the Dark Lord's touch was gentle as he rocked them back and forth.

A holy trinity to shape the very earth.

But what worth does a world hold when the boundaries have fallen..

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it :)


End file.
